


the stranger, the better

by Catznetsov



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Identity Porn, M/M, kind of, the fake it til you make it Kuznetsov school of emotional intimacy, unrequited Philipp Grubauer/Braden Holtby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 03:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15134558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov
Summary: Evgeny says, “Get a pretend boyfriend, then,” and, “What? Big lie can only be covered by an even bigger lie.”“You’re a blessing?” Philipp asks.Evgeny lifts a hand to cross himself again, kissing his fingertips, and winks.I’ve never seen the point of lying, Philipp wants to say. But what he would mean is, maybe I wish I were as good at it as you.





	the stranger, the better

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [PuckingRare2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2018) collection. 



> Grubauer/Kuznetsov, fake dating.
> 
> Grubi's parents come to visit, and he asks Kuzy to pretend to be his partner bc his parents are worried he's a hermit who's gonna die alone idk. Kuzy speaks some German, so he tries his best to play along and things go from there.

  
Philipp is still wriggling out from the tangle of his headphones and can’t answer the door when someone knocks, which is just as well, because Evgeny doesn’t.

“What’s up?” Evgeny says.

Philipp tries to finish winding the cord neatly around his fingers and look like someone who hasn’t just gotten grilled by all their aunts. They’re both about as likely to last, and by the time he has both fixed Evgeny is already eyeing his drawers.

“What’s up,” Philipp offers back. His role as audience is to ask.

“So I wanna borrow your camera,” Evgeny starts.

“I don’t want to give you my camera,” Philipp says, twisting to keep an eye on the unpredictable movement without looking like he is. It’s not that Evgeny will do anything, really, but he moves like sunspots in your eyes, long after you tried to look away. It sets off every netminding instinct. Philipp knows better than to let him know how annoying it is from watching Braden’s poor example.

“Nobody trust anymore,” Evgeny says, cheerful. “Nobody trust anybody, you know?”

Philipp’s grandmother has a saying about problems of one’s own making. She mostly says it when she looks at Philipp, though, so he doesn’t bring it up.

Evgeny blinks at him, slow, which means Philipp missed an opening, again. Other people tap you, make a little coughed-out sound so you know you’re dragging the conversation down. Evgeny looks at you like a house-cat, wondering how long he has to wait after you stop speaking before he can eat you.

“Okay,” he says, and settles easily on the edge of the hotel bed. “So what’s up?”

“Just my grandmother called. And she has everyone over, for Sunday.”

Evgeny looks fascinated.

Philipp could just not answer. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to speak until he’s pushed, and so hard not to when he is. “Do your family say they worry for you?”

Evgeny squints, like he wants Philipp to think he’s really thinking about it. “I think this is…depends,” he says. “What did I do?”

“I, no,” Philipp says. “Bigger, like.” Evgeny’s working Philipp’s pillows out of the way with his shoulders now, like if he just sells it it’s not so rude, and Philipp can’t see him as someone you ask for dating advice, can’t quite picture him having a person at home who puts up with this, but he can’t stop looking. “Being with people.”

“Baba says I am a blessing,” Evgeny says, and scoots himself up on one elbow enough to make the sign of the cross.

“Oh,” Philipp says. It’s a little hard to believe God wants direct credit for creating Kuzy, but it’s also hard to explain him any other way.

Evgeny flops back, closing his eyes. “What you baba say this time, then.”

“Nothing,” Philipp says. “They, you know.” Eyes shut, Evgeny still lifts his eyebrows just to show he doesn’t. “Ask me if there’s anyone.” They hadn’t. “Say they worry I get lonely.”

“Oh, oh,” Evgeny realizes. “So they worry who you love, yeah.”

Philipp forgot to take the wound cord off his fingers. He tries to twist them around each other, and feels its resistance. When he works the headphones down off his fingers he can’t remember where he’d thought to put them so he wouldn’t forget later.

Evgeny leans over to the nightstand, and taps the laptop case Philipp had left sitting out.

Leaning in to tuck them away means risking eye contact again.

Evgeny lingers, drums his fingers softly on the corner of the case. “He doesn’t know,” he says, plainly, pointedly kind, and Philipp knows that. If Braden knew, he’d know.

“I told them I’m not lonely,” Philipp tells the table lamp.

“Okay,” Evgeny says. And they’d said that, too; alright, Philipp, we love you, if you’re happy, it’s alright. They hadn’t believed him.

Evgeny says, “Get a pretend boyfriend, then,” and, “What? Big lie can only be covered by an even bigger lie.”

“You’re a blessing?” Philipp asks.

Evgeny lifts a hand to cross himself again, kissing his fingertips, and winks.

I’ve never seen the point of lying, Philipp wants to say. But what he would mean is, maybe I wish I were as good at it as you.

 

* * *

 

  
Kuzy drops the subject like a cat leaving a dead mouse, and Philipp edges around where it’s lying on the carpet all night. At breakfast someone slaps a muffin down in front of his plate, and when he looks up Evgeny smiles at him, the one where his lower lip pulls tight over his teeth.

He never finished asking about the camera, Philipp remembers.

“I think lots,” Evgeny says.

“Good morning,” Philipp manages. It isn’t the best reflection of either of them, but they’re probably not at their best with English in the mornings.

“Mm,” Evgeny says, and scrapes a chair over from a neighboring table. “So, I think, who you would date if you could date?” He flashes teeth over his own phrasing. “Anyone but….”

Philipp swipes his muffin. “Don’t.”

“I won’t,” Evgeny says.

Now he’s looking at Philipp plainly. Braden isn’t down yet, but Philipp tries to look like that isn’t the first thing he knows when he walks into a room. He runs a fingernail around the paper liner, peels it down and twists off a piece.

“I don’t want a bigger lie.”

“Nah,” Evgeny says. Everyone else is scattered around the room, politely ignoring Philipp before his start, taking the temporary calm from Kuzy’s storm at face value as he sits quiet for a long time. “Better one?”

It’s not a cue to speak, but it isn’t not, either. When Philipp says, “Yeah,” he knows he means to.

“Cool,” Evgeny says, “cool, cool,” and plucks a piece off the bare muffin. “You like gingers, huh?”

This will be how Philipp ends up in a coffee shop across from a forty-three year-old late night radio DJ Evgeny has somehow known for twenty years. “Love you, man,” he says. “I think I don’t want to date anyone you know, though. Your friends are all fifteen years older than us. And weird.”

“That’s fair. I don’t know anybody who wanna date you,” Evgeny admits, and takes more muffin. “Maybe somebody you’d want to date, though.”

There’s something to be said for bluntness. Philipp tries to think what it is exactly, and comes up short, but he counts it as a comfort anyway.

“Sorry, ah,” Evgeny says, and pushes the muffin back across. He folds his hands under his jaw, working one thumb over the new gold stubble there, and looks up at Philipp for a long time.

“Quiet,” he says, “enough. Little shy. Still in school for language—speaks a little German too, so you family like that. Even same age.”

“Oh, well then,” Philipp says.

Evgeny flicks his fingers at him, then notices his nails need attention. “Plays goalie for Fire Hockey, sometime, too. That’s league from fire station, hospital, you know.”

Philipp thinks a lot of things. He says, “Oh.”

Evgeny flashes a quick blue look at him. “Well yeah, you family know you gonna date another goalie,” he says. “You know, not my first rodeo.”

“What’s his name?”

“Steve,” Evgeny says, a little too easily.

“He have a last name?”

“You know,” Evgeny says, like that’s a whole sentence. “Just a sec,” and fishes around for his phone.

“You want me to pretend I’m dating someone whose name you don’t know?” Philipp asks, taking another bit of muffin and chewing while he pokes at it.

“Nah, it asked me when I make the Google email, to sign up for league,” Evgeny reassures him. “I just forget.” He’s one-finger pecking at the iPhone screen, and Philip thinks sometimes truly knowing someone is a horrible feeling.

“You mean you, don’t you,” he says. “How are you playing goal in a beer league?”

“Goalie finder.” Evgeny wiggles his phone. “I have the app.”

Philipp meant why, then, but he takes it anyway. The open app is showing someone who looks as much like Evgeny as anybody, skinny even with pads, red-gold just flashing through the mask, sinking into a respectable butterfly.

“Uh huh?” Evgeny says. He takes the phone back and looks at it approvingly, then holds it up again, a video this time, hits play and spreads his hands like a television host introducing his favorite contestant. It’s such an embarrassing gesture Philipp just can’t connect it to whoever made that pretty save on the little screen.

Philipp finds his spare napkin and presses it to his mouth, biting down for just a moment. His tongue tastes overpoweringly of lemon poppyseed, and he can feel the bad idea weighing down on it.

Evgeny presses pause.

“I act great,” he says, with that deliberate plainness again, generosity Philipp doesn’t know how to take.

“I don’t,” Philipp points out.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m help,” Evgeny says, and pauses again. “Imagine I like my friends. Or I like wins. I like celebrate with everyone, you know? Whatever. So whatever means goalies happy, yeah?”

Philipp folds the napkin up, and then into quarters, and thinks maybe some of the weight is gone with it. “Alright.”

“Okay,” Evgeny says. He pats Philipp’s hand once, and before Philipp can decide whether to put the napkin down and pat him back he’s standing and pushing his chair over to the table it came from. “Cool, cool. I’m gonna think how you meet for when we get home.”

He’s watching something over Philipp’s shoulder, the daytime television look gone and something almost hungry fixed on the hotel lobby door.

“You forgot,” Philipp says, and points to the half left of the muffin.

“I already ate with Batya,” Evgeny says. “That was for you. Hey, Holtsy, what’s up?” and then he’s slipped away.

“Hey, man,” Braden says, hand on the back of Philipp’s chair and leaning sleepily in to bump the crown of Philipp’s head hello with his cheek. Philipp can feel the warmth of him against his ribs, or maybe he’s just dreaming still. He doesn’t tip his head to look until Braden’s settled in a chair.

“Good morning,” he says back, and thinks, time to wake up.

 

* * *

 

 

  
They have Tuesday afternoon off, so Evgeny invites himself and his beer league alter ego hiking.

“Flaw in this plan,” he says, bouncing backwards across the mossy wooden footbridge so he can keep watching Philipp.

“Please be careful,” Philipp has to say. “I, what?”

Evgeny doesn’t turn around, but he hops onto a small boulder on the other side of the stream and perches there, slowly rising up onto his toes and rolling back down again, waiting while Philipp crosses too. Standing at the end of the footbridge Philipp’s just barely looking down to Evgeny on the rock, until he lifts onto his toes again.

“You, yeah,” he says, balancing meditatively on the tip of one yellow Nike now. “Your family loves you. Never gonna believe you ask some cute boy out.”

Philipp, who thinks he could probably do that if he tried but doesn’t have to skate every night anyway, doesn't let his eyes catch on Kuzy’s calves. “Didn’t take you two days to think of that,” he points out, instead of something else he can’t quite think clearly but feels sticking to the roof of his mouth. “You trying to find a way to say that nice, or did you think how to make the plan less fucked?”

Evgeny blinks at him, slow and satisfied. He might be counting as he lowers his weight deliberately down onto his heels. “Yeah,” he says. “Anyway we just gotta draw them into it. Hint, you know? Make a pretty picture and they finish it in.”

Pausing the climb when Philipp doesn’t need to rest yet makes his stomach ache. He steps off the bridge back onto the trail and holds a hand out. Evgeny delicately pats it, and then his fingers brush briefly over Philipp’s shoulder instead as he springs off the rock and on up the path.

Philipp catches up to him again a few hundred metres on, investigating an overlook. The mid afternoon sun is warm through the leaves and Philipp can hear the whisper of the river below and the rustle of bushes he’s disturbing, but there’s enough shrubbery between them and the edge that he’s pretty sure Evgeny won’t pick now to test if he can really fly.

He gets the Gatorade out while he’s waiting and drinks as much as he thinks he’s going to want before he offers it over, but Evgeny only sticks out a distracted hand and takes three measured drags. This time Philipp can see his mouth moving, counting out how much he allows himself to have.

“Is this pretty?” he asks.

“Mm,” Evgeny says, still holding the bottle like he’s forgotten it and squinting into the sun.

Sometimes Philipp wonders what it’s like to be that blond, the way his eyelashes cast light-shadows. Does everything he looks at have a halo?

“Kuzy. The plan,” he says, instead of asking.

“You said the plan,” Evgeny says. “Not my plan?”

Philipp’s English is feeling unusually stiff. “I’ll be honest,” he says, running his tongue over his lips until they soften at least a little. “Hoping you tell me what it is, someday.”

Evgeny glows at him, and reaches out. Philipp is expecting another pat on the shoulder, and feels the weight of the bottle fall back into his pack instead.

“So I’m gonna need to borrow your camera,” Evgeny says.

Philip swallows, and wishes he’d had more to drink. “It’s under the Gatorade now, I think,” he says, and then has to let Evgeny tug him around and feel him rifling an unnecessary number of pockets before he pulls out the camera case.

He holds it up, and once Philipp nods and starts a vague gesture miming how to open it he does, quickly securing the strap around his wrist and checking the lens cover. Philipp sticks his hands as deep as he can in his pockets.

“Nice,” Evgeny says. “I was gonna say, try to look shy. But scared works okay too.”

He spends a long time looking at the camera, running one finger down the outside of the frame and tapping but not turning each of the dials, like he’s making himself familiar, or wants Philipp to see that he is. When he finally looks through it he seems so self-satisfied Philipp has to smile, and then turn away toward the river to hide it.

He can hear the tiny snick and louder happy hum of Evgeny taking pictures, and wonders what he looks like in them. By the sound of it, Evgeny thinks he looks convincingly like someone with a new summer crush on some cute boy.

 

* * *

 

 

  
Philipp’s aunts don’t not notice that the new Facebook photos from his ordinarily solitary hike must have taken by somebody else.

“Nice,” is all Evgeny says, when he says so, but they’re filing onto the plane. Up ahead André’s arguing that he should be allowed to join in card games and he promises not to bite Tom again even if he’s losing, and Evgeny’s whole body is tuned towards the opportunity for conflict. They don’t sit together, Philipp remembers, and he tucks it away until later, when Evgeny’s on his hotel bed again paging through Philipp’s Facebook, and Philipp’s perched on the desk chair, spinning it slowly.

“Aw,” Evgeny says, and “nice,” again, but this time he’s focused on little on-screen Philipp, and it sounds more different than it should.

“Yeah,” Philipp says. “Yeah, okay.”

Evgeny lowers his phone to give him a long grey stare. Philipp tucks his toes under the spokes of the chair to anchor himself from spinning, and thinks he was sure his eyes were blue before, but then his great-uncle replies to one of the photos, and Evgeny starts reading it out loud to make sure he understood Alrik’s spelling errors right. His German sounds like an old kitchen radio, rising and falling and scratching softly through the consonants, but he isn’t wrong often.

“Steve is a linguistics major,” Evgeny says, distracted. “That’s why he moved to DC, for school.”

“Isn’t Steve twenty-five too?” Philipp asks.

“Oh, no, Steve’s twenty-seven,” Evgeny says. “When I join I tell the guys, you know, ‘cause I wasn’t eighteen, so. You should say five, just don’t let the guys at the station know, yeah?” He pauses, lays the phone on his chest and folds his hands over it, thinking. “You know, nobody asked in a while. I don’t know, maybe he’s graduate by now. Maybe he take a break some year. Life’s rough, you know. Oh, maybe he’s gonna be a teacher, yeah? You should say that.”

“Oh,” Philipp says. “Yeah, that’s good.”

“Yeah?” Evgeny checks.

“Yeah. I guess I would date a teacher,” Philipp says. “They’d believe that, so.”

Steve is twenty-five or twenty-seven, from Seattle, and teaches twelve to fourteen year-olds because Evgeny says he thinks kids that age are funny, which Philipp can’t decide how to respond to. He speaks English and French and German and won a couple championship games for Fire Hockey last year before he had to tell them he was focusing on finals. They lost, but Evgeny reassures Philipp everybody got beer anyway. His best friend is a paramedic named Cherylyn and he likes quiet nights at home, public radio and basketball.

Philipp’s family believe Philipp would date him, because they love Philipp, so they know him, and Philipp thinks he would, if he could.

Evgeny follows him hiking again, and Philipp thinks about grabbing another Gatorade for him, but when they stop he drinks exactly a third of it again, neat. When he’s done he flicks the bottle so it rolls across the grass to Philipp and falls back, pointedly pillowing his head on his arms.

“Camera?” he says, but when Philipp moves to hand it over he just makes his eyes very wide. “No, no, you.”

Philipp looks back down at the camera. He touches the dials without turning them, finds a point of focus on a waving tassel in the tall grass and sinks back into this.

When he turns back Evgeny’s only turned his face to rest more comfortably, following Philipp from the corners of his eyes. The sun is angling through the grass, a faint breeze stirring, casting deep streaks of shadows over his hair, the silhouette of a daisy on his cheek, while the white short-sleeved shirt he conceded to wear today almost glows. From a photo at this angle and with that contrast, you wouldn’t know who he is.

Philipp takes a couple, shifting as Evgeny turns to keep most of his face in the flickering shadows. The daisy floating over him bends with the breeze, kissing his nose when he isn’t expecting it, and the camera catches as he startles, laughing, and falls back. He reaches out to wrap his fingers around Philipp’s knee and Philipp almost startles too, sunspots blooming when he blinks. But then he lets Evgeny pull him into frame for one more, toe of his boot against Kuzy’s hip, knee just pressed to his ribs, dark jeans against cotton he’s just noticing is printed with tiny pineapples, Evgeny’s arm thrown out along his thigh and out of the picture.

“Okay?” Evgeny says, after a while, as Philipp’s still looking at the little screen. He lifts his head, enough that the light finds his face again, sparking bright through the viewfinder.

Philipp finds the lens cover, secures it and lays the camera down. “Hey,” he says. “Why you bother playing goal?”

“Oh,” Evgeny says. “It’s peace. Not easy, like, just peace. Don’t have to think, you know? No…” he sweeps his fingers across the flattened grass between them, chasing each other, tracing out a play. “Where’s next, and next, and after that. That’s all, they decide all that, and I just gotta see where they go.”  
  
Philipp has never wondered what the difference is between them, never particularly thought to compare. If he had it might have been something like ‘natural charisma’ or ‘taste in shoes’, but he supposes this works, too. “You think reading people is peaceful?”

Evgeny rocks back, tipping his head side to side so the shadows fall differently, and suddenly Philipp can see his eyes without the halo of sun through his lashes. “And you think it’s easy,” he says, “but not peaceful.”

Maybe his driver’s license says what color his eyes are, Philipp thinks, and says, “Yeah.”

“I think that last one’s good,” Evgeny says, but his arm is still just brushing the outer seam of Philipp’s jeans, and he closes his eyes. Philipp stays still, watching the drifting daisy, for a long time.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I want the original prompter to get a good fic! Due to time and some personal conflicts, I divided this into two parts at what seemed like a natural point so that you'd get a full story, but I swear there's a second half with more closure that will be up.


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